Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
analysis. The Groundwater in the Political Domain project will test intervention
strategies, following changes in the negotiation scene and the development of new
dynamics of change as new players are brought in and perspectives of stakeholders
are shifted from within or outside the political black box. Dissecting the politi-
cal black box and not being afraid of seeing the human actors behind the large
political puppets is therefore essential.
2 Change implementation includes negotiations between stakeholders. Boundaries
in negotiations are needed on the one hand and can prevent 'thinking out of the
box' on the other. In the development of any framework, attention will be given
to these boundary effects (Meerts 2011).
3 Water frameworks to translate risk factors related to political violence and war into
multi-level preventive interventions can profit fromwork done in the public health
domain. More coordination of the work done in different sectors is needed and the
integration of findings will be useful. The presentation of the GPP-results at the
6th WWF in Marseille in the context of existing solutions for water conflicts in a
variety of situations is a useful start for the development of intervention strategies.
Much remains to be done in the project. At the field level, the project aims at
initiating more cases studies - shifting towards other distinct groundwater hotspots in
each of the three countries (up scaling). In Ethiopia, the project will work on regional
groundwater conflicts around fast growing urban areas, in particular in the Oromyia
Special Zone around Addis Ababa, and also venture into conflicts around groundwater
in pastoralist areas, a direction that follows on from the recommendations received
during local stakeholder consultations. In Palestine, the project will start to work in
other water scarce areas and translate the findings in a national analysis, while in
Yemen the idea is to focus on three more areas, taking on board governance around
urban areas and fortifying the findings with economic analysis where possible, with
the aim of reflecting this in briefs for policy makers and politicians.
Lessons learned from the field studies are incorporated in governance issues at
country level and strongly linked to international debates. This will be done by con-
tributing to policy studies in Ethiopia, Palestine and Yemen, preparing policy briefs and
having systematic meetings, including using informal opportunities to raise points. In
Palestine this will also be done by cooperating with the MYWAS-WEAP project team,
which analyses the economic effects of different political and water allocation strate-
gies, thereby assisting the preparation of water negotiations (Smidt et al. 2013). The
GP project will contribute to the scenario determination and the feedback mechanism
for different political and stakeholder levels. Contributions to international debates
and framework developments will continue, especially with regard to the debate on
groundwater governance at global level and at the Dutch national level. The inter-
national groundwater governance is brought together in a Framework for Country
Action that is supported by FAO, IAH, GEF, UNESCO-IHP and World Bank. In this
project a Vision and Framework for Country Action will be developed, and will most
likely be followed by an international code of conduct for country groundwater gov-
ernance. The analysis of the narratives from the three case analyses is supportive to
this process.
Gradually the project will be able to develop more explicit methodologies that
can be applied in other situations as well. The execution of political action plans in
Search WWH ::




Custom Search